Companies whose operations rely on programmable control systems, which could include ships and offshore structures in the maritime industry, are increasingly becoming a target for cyber threats.
Insurers and reinsurers should come up with policy covers to help their clients mitigate the risk, delegates at the 5th Annual Africa Insurance & Reinsurance Conference in Nairobi were told today.
KPMG Kenya’s IT Advisory senior manager Antony Nzamu told said that many organisations across all economic sectors “are recognising and experiencing first hand that cyber attacks are no longer a matter of ‘if’ but when”.
“While disruptive technologies are interfacing and are getting interdependent, malicious users and attackers are leveraging on this interdependence for the more sophisticated of attacks,” he said.
He said companies across economic sectors should ensure they have “a robust incident response mechanism to detect, prevent and act on cyber crime.”
AIG Kenya Financial Lines Manager Bernard Dulo said the increasing threat of cyber attacks provide an opportunity for African and international insurance and reinsurance companies to increase their investment opportunities in Africa.
For example, Dulo said that insurers could launch policy covers that could cater for the financial costs of insurable fines and penalties for companies found by data protection regulatory authorities to have breached existing regulations, making them vulnerable to cyber attacks.
Dulo said the insurers can also provide policy cover that could encourage firms to hire expert consultancy during and after cyber breach and also in safeguarding and rebuilding such companies’ reputation.
Insurance companies, Dulo said, could also provide special policy covers against the risk of cyber privacy intrusion and extortion from, by providing “ransom payments to third parties incurred in ending such a security threat”.
This post was sourced from IHS Maritime 360: View the original article here.
